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Read Roald Dahl’s Subversive Letters in ‘Love From Boy’

In 600 letters compiled by Donald Sturrock, we encounter the darkly comic writing that would make Dahl famous in children’s books such as ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ and ‘Matilda.’

By

Moira Hodgson

Sept. 16, 2016 2:34 p.m. ET

‘How much are the monkeys at Harrods?” a 10-year-old Roald Dahl inquired in a letter to his mother, sent from boarding school in 1927. “It would be rather nice to have one.”

Between 1925 and 1965, Dahl wrote 600 letters to his mother, Sofie Magdalene, who was widowed when he was three. She kept them all, and after her death in 1967 they were returned to the author, neatly bundled with green tape. They’ve now been compiled by Dahl’s...